Hays head baseball coach Doug Ragsdale will retire at the end of the school year. He's been coaching football and baseball at Hays since 1990. (Photo by Joel San Miguel)
By JASON GORDON
After a coaching career that spanned five decades, Hays head baseball coach and football defensive coordinator Doug Ragsdale has decided to assure his schedule book includes a lot more free time on the weekends.
Ragsdale, who started his coaching career in 1972 and has been at Hays since 1990, will be retiring from coaching and teaching following this school year.
“One of the biggest factors is that my grandkids are getting to the age where they are starting to play soccer, little league, little dribblers, things like that,” Ragsdale said. “All of those things take place on the weekends. During the fall football season, attending anything like that is out of the question because we work a lot on the weekends.”
Ragsdale, who teaches AP Biology, said the fact the curriculum will be changing is another reason he’s decided to retire. Many students over the years at Hays have said Ragsdale is one of their favorite all-time high school teachers.
“I’ve been teaching the same curriculum for 12 years,” he said. “I knew with the changes that were upcoming it might be time to hand that class off to a younger teacher.”
Hays sophomore Alex Schaubhut took Ragsdale’s class as a freshman.
“Coach Ragsdale was the kind of teacher that made every single one of his students think,” Schaubhut said. “He cared about us understanding the material, not just memorizing it to forget next week. He taught us like a college professor to prepare us for later in life. He will be greatly missed.”
On the playing fields, Ragsdale has been both offensive and defensive coordinator in football, first under Bob Shelton, who retired in 2010, and now under Blake Feldt.
He helped guide the Hays football team to numerous playoff appearances over the years, including a berth in the 1996 Class 4A Division I finals, where the Rebels lost to Grapevine.
Last fall, Hays won its first playoff game since 2006, beating San Antonio Brennan in the bi-district round.
“I don’t think the transition from Coach Shelton to Coach Feldt could have gone any smoother,” Ragsdale said. “I want to make sure everyone knows I’m not retiring because of the head coaching change. I have the utmost respect for Blake and I think our football team is ready to take off again.”
Feldt said Ragsdale helped him feel welcome at Hays from the start.
“I can’t tell you how grateful I was with the way Coach Ragsdale helped me with the transition,” Feldt said. “When I got here his attitude was to work with me from the start and he jumped right on board with what we were trying to accomplish. He was a big reason my first season here went so smoothly, and he did an unbelievable job with our defense last year.”
Ragsdale had coaching stops at Roswell, Hobbs and Ruidoso in New Mexico, and at Kerrville Tivy before settling in at Hays in 1990.
Since becoming the head baseball coach in 1995, he has taken a Rebel squad that had only been to the playoffs once in team history and has made Hays into one of the most consistent programs in Central Texas. His overall baseball coaching record is 378-161.
The Rebel baseball team has made the playoffs in 14 of Ragsdale’s 17 seasons at the helm, and has twice gone on incredible streaks of winning district titles.
Hays won five district titles in a row in the 1990s, and then won four in a row in the 2000s.
Ragsdale said he has many fond baseball memories through the years.
Some of his favorites include the first playoff run Hays made when he was head coach in 1995.
“We beat New Braunfels High in a one-game playoff to win district, and then in the playoffs Coy Lowden pitched a heck of a game to beat Kerrville Tivy and we advanced all the way to the regional final,” he said. “I also remember teams like in 1998 when we started out 3-8 and rallied together to win district and then made it to the third round of the playoffs.”
Hays defeated No. 1 Belton in the playoffs in 1999, relying on the strong starting pitching of Stan Deringer, the closing pitching of Matt Davey and a two-run monster homer off the bat of David Evans.
One of the more memorable baseball games to take place at Hays High School was in 2001, when Nick Vallejo outdueled future Texas Longhorn and professional baseball star Huston Street in a 2-1 Rebel win over Westlake.
Ragsdale’s 2007 team, led by the ace pitching of Michael Rocha, who went on to lead the Oklahoma Sooners staff, lost 3-2 in the regional semifinals in Victoria against a Corpus Christi Moody team that went on to win the Class 4A state title.
In 2010, a Hays team that wasn’t picked to finish among the district leaders went on to not only qualify for the playoffs but the Rebs beat highly-regarded Montgomery and Nederland before losing in the regional quarterfinals.
Ragsdale said there were many great baseball players that have come through the Rebel program through the years, including Donnie Joseph, who is currently one of the best relief pitchers in the Cincinnati Reds organization, and Jon Gonzalez, who led the state in homers with 17 in 2009 and once hit a ball so far that landed on top of Bales basketball gym way beyond center field and ended up under the football stadium’s visitor’s stands.
“The biggest memories I have were that our kids always seemed to buy into our philosophy of playing great defense and putting the ball in play,” Ragsdale said. “I’m highly satisfied with the direction the team has taken since I’ve been head baseball coach.”
Current Hays baseball player Charles Johnson said this year’s Rebels want to send Ragsdale out with another successful season on the diamond.
“Coach brought us up since our freshman year and taught us not only how to be good baseball players but how to be good men off the field,” said senior pitcher and outfielder Miguel Valdez. “Our goal is to have a very successful season this year and win one more district title for Coach Ragsdale.”
Ragsdale said the possibilities are endless for what he and his wife Cheryl may be doing on any given weekend.
All three of his children, Rick, an offensive coordinator for defending Class 1A Division I state football champion Mason, Ray and Rene are Hays graduates. Ragsdale has eight grandkids.
“I’m looking forward to sitting in the stands with my wife and watching games my kids are coaching or my grandkids are playing in,” he said. “My brother has always talked about going elk hunting in the fall, but that’s something I could never have done while I was coaching. I’ll miss coaching and teaching the kids during the week, but I certainly won’t miss the 30-hour work weekends during the fall.”
There’s a chance Ragsdale might still be very involved in the Hays CISD despite his retirement, as he’s filed as a candidate to replace Patti Wood on the school board. Wood, the current board president, reportedly will be leaving her at-large position when her term is up in May.
“I’ve always felt that once I retired I would run for the school board,” Ragsdale said. “Think I have a unique insight that a lot of people that might run for the school board don’t have. During the past 40 years, I’ve been a coach and a classroom teacher and I’ve learned a lot about how the education system works. I think it would give me a chance to work in education and still have the benefits of retirement that I’m looking forward to.”
Feldt said there has been no timetable set yet on hiring Ragsdale’s replacement.
